Hip Hop Congress

Longtime critics

Blacks also are longtime critics of rap, hip-hop, forum shows

Original Article Here

If an outcry over offensive language directed at black women sank Don Imus’ radio career, why haven’t black people complained about black rappers who use similar language?

Well, they have, but relatively few people listened to their cries for a stop to the words and images depicted in rap and hip-hop music, said a panel of black scholars and activists who participated in Wednesday night’s town hall discussion of “Does Hip-Hop Hate Women?” at Case Western Reserve University.

Mark Anthony Neal, a popular culture professor at Duke University, said a generation of hip-hop aficionados has criticized the negative aspects of the music almost from the beginning.

“It’s not like no one has been having these conversations,” he said.

But Joan Morgan, former executive editor of Essence magazine and author of “When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost,” said she was angry because some celebrities garnered all the media attention in the wake of the Imus affair, while informed hip-hop activists were ignored by mainstream media.

“I really do resent Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Oprah Winfrey,” Morgan said. “All of these people who now want to pretend that hip-hop has not always had a critical base of people who come from this culture, who come from this generation, who love this music, and are critical of it at the same time.”

The campus-directed discussion was part of a 10-city national tour to draw attention to the misogyny embedded in popular culture and especially in best-selling rap music.

In addition to moderator Bakari Kitwana, author of “Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop,” others on the panel included: Tracy Sharpley Whiting, director of African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University, and author of “Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip-Hop’s Hold on Black Women” and Mexie Wilson, an activist with the Cleveland-area Hip-Hop Congress.

Emboldened by the widespread public outcry following the Imus incident, black critics of hip-hop and rap say the time may be right for a wider audience to hear what many black people have said privately among themselves.

Another panelist, Byron Hurt, spent two years filming “Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” a documentary that criticizes the anti-black women and homophobic messages in rap. He said many black Americans have condemned the music and videos for excessively depicting women as sexual objects.

His 60-minute film analyzed the history of rap from its roots as youthful social protest in the early 1970s against the destruction of black and Latino neighborhoods in the Bronx to the slick images of homo-eroticism and misogyny broadcast on cable television and displayed on popular magazine covers.

At one point in the film, a group of up-and-coming rappers complained that they wouldn’t get major-label contracts if they didn’t use profane language or demean women in their performances.

“The industry, they don’t give us deals when we speak righteously,” Hurt said.

Rapper-turned-activist Chuck D challenged them to change the industry by changing themselves, urging black consumers to confront the music industry’s sexual exploitation of black women with rap music. Turning directly to face the camera, Chuck D said: “The only thing that can turn the tide is black men.”

After Tuesday night’s screening of his film, Hurt spoke to about 150 people in Strosacker Auditorium at Case.

“I love hip-hop,” he said. “The image of hip-hop isn’t balanced.”

Hurt said he produced the documentary and helped organize the campus tour because so few people seemed to listen to the critical voices within black communities.

“If you Google ‘hip-hop activism,’ you’ll find over a million hits that include African-American scholars and activists who have critical views of the images in the hip-hop community,” Hurt said in an interview. “(Black) people have been saying this for years, but whenever we do, it’s never reported in the media.”